Sleepers, Awake: Outtakes
by Feisty Y. Beden
Summary: Outtakes and drabbles related to the Sleepers, Awake universe. The rating may change as outtakes are added.
1. Kind of Sort of Not Accidentally

**A/N: This is a silly outtake. There will be others, perhaps, after this whole story is done. This outtake was written for bsmog, who bid on me in the Support Stacie auction. She wanted to know what happened to Seth after "She Learns the Consequences."**

**Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer probably owns the rights to my underpants as well.**

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**Kind of Sort of Not Accidentally**

The last thing I remember was fear, darkness, and pain. I didn't know what would happen to me. We all just knew that it was something you didn't do. You couldn't remind the princess of anything she didn't remember herself.

Rules are stupid, if you ask me. Trouble is, no one ever asks me.

_She _tried to save me, and to be honest, it was hard for me to believe _she _was the same girl I used to play with in the old days, before we lost Paradise. I felt her love, but I just wanted her to remember who I was. Why should she remember Mr. Serious-All-the-Time Jacob and cranky Leah but not me? I was the coolest one! She loved _me_ best!

I think the fear was worse than the actual dying. It was so dark, but the crushing feeling lasted only a minute. Before I could scream out in pain, it was over.

And now I'm somewhere else.

Everything smells amazing—like so amazing I just want to roll around lie on my back and crush the leaves and wiggle my paws in the sky like I'm trying to run up to heaven.

Oh, wait.

Am I in heaven?

I go exploring a bit. There are clear pools everywhere, sparkling, crystal, and the waters are sweet. Each pond tastes a little different, but they are all delicious. I start to bark and howl and leap around. I haven't felt this bouncy since I was a newborn pup, when _she_ sang me into being. I remember the time before then, I think, when I felt like just one star in a whole big galaxy, a universe extending infinitely. We all thought the same and sang the same song, but a little part of me tried to mix up the rhythm, you know, jazz things up a little.

One day I felt pulled. I felt more "me." My song was finally _really _different from the others'. And then I was in _her_ hands, feeling safe and loved, and I licked her palm with my little baby wolf tongue. She tasted like kindness.

"Hello, my wolfy wolf," she said, and she kissed me on my head and tickled my belly. I almost peed in her hand, but something told me that would not be polite. I held it in. But I laughed and kicked my legs and swatted at her chubby fingers as they came in to tickle me again. "I will call you Seth," she said, and she put me on the ground.

I miss her.

But this place is nice, and I can run so fast—I bet I'd beat Jacob in any race now. I feel strong, too, like I could take him in a wrestling match.

"I'm the King of Wolf Mountain!" I shout as loud as I can, and there is sort of a … I don't know, a massive wall of wheezy wolfy laughter all around me.

"Who's there?" I shout, puffing out my chest and trying to look tough.

From the shadows, all these wolves, hundreds and hundreds of them, come from everywhere, like ants spilling out of an anthill. "Seth!" they cry at once. "We've been waiting for you!"

I look at their faces, and it's the coolest reunion ever. I mean, better than that time Princess Izzy insisted on having this thing she called "Field Day," when she tied our legs together for us to have what she called "seven-legged races." That was a bad idea, but we laughed a lot. But this? This is way better!

"You guys!" I shout. "I haven't seen you in ages!"

"We know!" they say. "We weren't sure if you'd _ever_ get here."

We touch noses and sniff each other's you-know-whats, because, come on, we are wolves. That's what we do.

Anyway, then this one wolf, Melanie, she comes up to me. When she was taken by the Stone One, I was so upset—she was so quiet and gentle. I almost challenged him to a duel or whatever, as if I could have made a difference, but Jacob held me back by the scruff of my neck. She had these amazing eyelashes. I mean, you don't think about wolves and eyelashes, right? But she had them, honest. When she'd flutter her lids, I could swear I heard birds chirping.

I never told anyone about it, not even all those years it was just me and Jacob and Leah.

"Seth, is that really you?" she says.

"M-m-m-melanie?" I stammer, scratching at the ground with my paw. I hope she can't see that I'm scratching a little heart into the ground.

"You remember!" she shouts. And we run around each other in circles, and start to wrestle a bit, and maybe, just maybe, I _accidentally_ let my paw graze along her soft belly, and _maybe_ I pretend I'm panting and out of breath with my tongue hanging out, and _maybe _I lick her face kind of sort of not accidentally. Maybe.

But she giggles and smiles and asks me to go for a run with her. She takes off without warning, looking over her shoulder at me, and I swear to the Eternal that she does that fluttery eyelash thing. Her eyelashes are even longer than I remember, and I feel all funny in my wolfy knees. I tear off after her, yelling, "Oh, you are _dead_, you cheater!" but throw back my head and laugh.

I chase her, letting her beat me, until we reach what feels like the edge of the world. I stop dead in my tracks.

"What's that?" I ask her, looking in awe at this huge body of water in front of me. The water goes on forever. The earth under my feet is strange, soft and rough all at once, and the water comes up to my paws and goes back, like it's alive, like it's dancing, like it's trying to lick my feet to say hello.

"That's the ocean," she says, and even just the word _ocean_ makes me feel like I've come home.

I'm quiet for a second, trying to see the end of this _ocean_, my heart beating fast but not from fear.

I'm so lost in my thoughts, in the wonder of the beauty of this place, this _ocean_, that I don't notice Melanie's run off. She sneaks up behind me, takes a flying leap, and yells, "CANNONBALL!" jumping where the water is a little deeper, totally soaking me.

I grumble at her, pretending to be angry, but she does that eyelash thing again, and I chase after her, my tail wagging in anticipation.

Yeah, I think I'm going to like it here.


	2. Nur eine Stimme

**A/N: This drabble was bought in the Fandom Gives Back auction by the wonderful philadelphic, who wanted me to write an EPOV of Sleepers after he dies but becomes aware of Bella on earth. Thank you, philadelphic, for being all around awesome, and for sharing with the class.**

**Disclaimer: Still not mine.  
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****Nur eine Stimme**

It was almost unbearable when I first arrived, my soul torn from my body violently, pushed through a sharp sieve from one consciousness to the next. I'm told it's like that if you go suddenly.

For a while I saw nothing, but then I began to be aware of things in a way incomparable to human vision. It was as if my whole _body_, or I guess my whole _spirit_ could see, not just where I was, but what was happening on the other plane, where I once had walked without giving much thought to what lay beyond.

It seemed like eons, lifetimes, before I became aware of words and speech and thoughts again. For so long it felt as though I were being pieced back together, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, from being scattered to every corner of the universe. It took ages for all those particles of _me_ to form again into my consciousness.

But time works differently here. It ebbs and flows; it freezes and speeds. It goes in every direction at once, pliable as taffy.

Every time someone thought of me, it was like a small pull back toward the earth. I could feel my parents' quiet, consuming despair, my dear sister's bewilderment and anger, my brother's brave attempts to be strong for everyone else.

I tried not to think of _her_, my muse, my love, because I missed her too much. She made me want to go back, when I knew such things were impossible.

But then, one voice. One voice called to me louder than the others. At first I was convinced it was a voice I didn't know, but then I received flashes, glimmers, little gifts of hidden memory from when I was just a boy. This voice wept for me more than my own flesh and blood, family, friends. She didn't even _know_ me, and yet her heart cried out to me constantly, a wounded animal. And the more I heard her voice, the more it felt as though she had always been meant to be part of me, somehow.

I sensed her struggle with life, every day a battle for her, trying and failing to figure out what was right, what was good, and what was selfish. I ached to know her. I began to send messages in dreams, in visions, in the wind, to the people who'd loved me best, trying to get them to find her, to reach her, because I was unable to. I wanted to know more. It wasn't enough to hear her voice only when I was in her thoughts.

And though I couldn't see her face, her mortal face, I began to love the voice that plaintively called my name, my soul.


	3. Die Unbekannte

**A/N: This is a FGB drabble purchased by the fantabulous arfalcon. She's wonderful and generous and has also agreed to share with the class. She wanted any Alice POV, and to me, there was one story that absolutely needed to be told.

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**Die Unbekannte**

Mom was waiting for me in the parking lot. I hated therapy day. I hated leaving class early, with the nurse knocking on my classroom door and everyone else in the room looking at me like I was the Elephant Man. It was worse since … no, I was going to squish those feelings down. I'd lost too many people. Knowing me was a hazard to your health. I thrust my hands in my coat pockets and kicked open the main door. And there was Mom with her car still running, keeping it warm for me.

It was like because I didn't grow there, inside her belly, that she had to work extra hard to prove that she was going to take care of me, like the car was some kind of replacement womb.

We were driving by the graveyard, and Mom slowed the car like she always did. She probably wasn't even aware she did it. She was humming, trying to fill the silence in the car and our hearts. I drummed a little on the dashboard so I could make some sound too.

And then I felt something like cold prickles on my neck. _Go to her_, someone whispered in my ear, but Mom was still humming, and we were the only ones in the car. I didn't know who said it, who "her" was, but I knew I needed to get out of the car. I unfastened my belt and opened the door. Mom was yelling at me, not so much out of anger but fear. I wasn't processing her words. I stumbled a little as I jumped out of the car, but it didn't hurt. Or, at least, I pretended it didn't hurt. I was getting good at pretending.

The wind touched my face like a kiss, and I heard it again: _Go to her_. So I ran across the street, into the graveyard. The ground was wet and soaked my sneakers. My toes felt squishy and cold.

I knew the way. I could have probably run there with my eyes closed. She was the reason I was even here. If she hadn't died, Mom and Dad wouldn't have needed to find me. _Eddie will sleep here someday_, I thought, and then I forced the thought back down, pushed it down, down, down because I didn't want to cry today. I stopped dead in my tracks, because I wasn't alone.

Someone was kneeling at the grave, _our_ grave. Our grave was for family only. I was ready to shove her from the back, maybe smash her head right into the stone. My hand went up to push her, but the wind kissed my cheek again. _Find her_, I heard.

_Eddie_? I asked, my heart beating fast, and I looked around me. _Are you here?_

I touched the stranger on the arm, wondering if Eddie had been reborn already, in another body. She turned around with scared eyes, with scared, sad eyes. No, Eddie was not in those eyes. I bit my lip.

She knew my name. I didn't know how. I didn't know why she was here. All I knew was that Eddie was not in her eyes. I saw his name carved on the stone, and it made it real again. _He's gone. He's gone forever_.

I didn't know I was crying until this stranger touched my cheek as gently as the wind and wiped a tear away from my cold cheek. She hugged me, this stranger, and it was okay to be sad in front of her because it wouldn't hurt her more. It wasn't like trying to keep my tears in for my family, for Mom who looked like she was about to break. I sobbed and sobbed into her shirt, and she just held me and let me be sad.

I held her hand and squeezed it to say, _Thank you_. And then she did the oddest thing—she started talking about how much she'd always loved Eddie, and I knew then that she _got it_. She knew how special Eddie was. And I wanted to cry all over again, but it also made my heart feel a little less lonely, that there was someone who missed him as much as I did.

So I took my notepad from my pocket and wrote _I know_ on it before tearing it out and folding it up. I wanted her to read the note in front of me, so I could see it in her eyes, her eyes that did not have any Eddie in them but had seen the real him. But then I heard Mom calling for me, and the girl ran away. Maybe she wasn't even real.

The wind kissed my face again, and I was cold, so I wrapped my hands around myself and hugged myself tight, pretending it was Eddie. But of course it was only me.

I went back to Mom, and we walked back to the car I knew she had left running so I wouldn't be cold when she found me again.


	4. Erinnerung

**A/N: Here's another FGB drabble, this time for bsmog. She asked for EPOV. This one dovetails with the previous drabble. I've got a few more drabbles to fill in some info before I get to the big oneshot. I'm guessing she'd let me share this, since she let me share the last drabble, the Seth POV from Support Stacie.**

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Erinnerung**

I was getting used to the observing, learning how to watch without eyes. All my senses were combined now. I followed _her_ movements as much as I checked on my family to see how they were coping. _Not very well_, I noted, feeling a momentary twinge of guilt. But then I felt the calm settle over me. It was hard to hold onto any emotion here. Most of the time I simply _was_.

I tried to send a message to Alice, because I knew she was near the voice that called to me. I could feel their thoughts mingling, even though they didn't know each other. The voice was with my sister—my other one, not the baby girl I'd never gotten to know.

I was still trying to find Emmy. She had to be here somewhere, but maybe I wouldn't have recognized her. Did she stay frozen as a baby? What was I? Was I still the same age as I was at the crash? I felt the same, but how much time had gone by? I thought about how I was able to hear my family and wondered if little baby Emmy had been listening for me this whole time. Would she have warned me about getting on that plane? Why couldn't I feel her?

It struck me then that aside from the tugging of grief back to the other side, I felt alone. Why couldn't I feel _anyone _else? Was I stuck? I almost panicked, but then the calm and light settled over me again.

My thoughts shifted back to the other side, to the dual pulling from _that voice_ and Alice. How strange, to feel both of their thoughts, feel both of their grief tear through my mind at once. I was frustrated. I wanted to make things right. I would have punched things if I still had hands. _Oh, Alice, my sweet baby girl_, I thought, _go to her. Maybe she can help._ Her thoughts stayed the same color of sorrow. I tried to compress all my atoms into a single, dense ball. _Go to her_, I thought again, focusing my thoughts like a laser. _It's your Eddie. Go to her_. _Find her_.

Had it worked? I wished I could _see_. I wished I could be there, make things right. Suddenly I could feel it—something had changed. The two beacons of grief came closer and closer together until they were in the same place, one amplified by the other. It was almost too much for me to feel.

I was shocked to see a memory I didn't even remember: me pushing Alice in a swing when she was still small—I guessed it must have been soon after Mom and Dad had adopted her. Alice was laughing, just genuinely laughing, her mouth open, her eyes wide with delight. Now that I saw this borrowed memory, I could remember my fingers curled and springing against the swing seat as I pushed her higher, higher. If I had breath, it would have been sucked from me from the vividness of the image, from the intensity of how much I missed Alice right then.

Who was this voice who knew these secret, lost memories? It was a gift, remembering the feel of rubber on fingertips, the way Alice's hair ruffled in the wind, the pride I felt in my heart, the love I could barely contain for my perfect new sister.

The beacons were separate again, mourning in their own, separate ways. I tucked the new memory in my consciousness. _Don't forget again_, I thought, as I felt the tugging shift slightly, the grieving souls once again wandering independently, tiny tugs of grief from all over the earth, lighting up like runway lights.


	5. Eine heimliche Nachricht

**A/N: There are a couple more bits of info I need to get out there before I get to the epic FGB one-shot purchased by algonquinrt and adorablecullens, so here is another APOV. Enjoy.**

**Disclaimer: Still not mine.

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**Eine heimliche Nachricht**

The doctor's appointment was annoying as usual. I think he could tell I'd been crying. He'd ask me a lot of yes and no questions, and I'd bob or shake my head, and when I grew tired of it, I'd slump back in the chair and cross my arms and pretend I was somewhere else. Anywhere else. He sounded frustrated, but I didn't like being cracked open like a nut. I knew Mom and Dad thought these appointments were supposed to help me, which is why I went at all, but this guy with the big Santa beard didn't deserve to know all my secrets, especially since he spent half of the forty-five-minute "hour" stifling yawns.

I dozed off in the warm car as we left the appointment—Mom would go out there a little before the appointment ended so she could start the heat and be right at the building's main entrance when I was done. I was having a strange dream of being in the woods somewhere. There was a bright castle-like thing past the forest, but I didn't want to go out in the sunlight, so I stayed in the shade. I touched the bark on the trees, let pine needles brush my face. Everything here smelled so _real_; the pine needles made me think of Christmas.

_Eddie won't be here at Christmas_, I realized suddenly, and I sank to the floor, my back against a tree. I'd never had a dream so vivid, the color cranked up like I had been fiddling with the controls on the big flatscreen in the family room. I cried here, silently—the only way I could—but where my teardrops fell on the soil, little flowers bloomed. Lilies-of-the-valley, and they smelled amazing too. _So pretty_. _Here my grief is beautiful_.

"Alice? Alice, honey?" My mom was shaking me awake. As she promised, we were at the graveyard again. "Do you want to visit Emmy and Edward?"

I nodded and undid my seatbelt. Mom waited for me on the other side of the car, and we held hands as we crossed the street into the entrance of the cemetery. My other hand was cold, so I jammed it in my pocket, feeling the sharp stone there. Eddie had given me this stone. He knew I had nightmares, and he knew I was afraid so much of the time. One night the summer before he left for college, he was going out to Port Angeles to see a movie with some friends. He was about to leave the house, but he saw me pouting from the top of the stairs. I'd been wondering how I'd ever be able to cope without him nearby—Illinois might as well have been the moon. He turned around and ran back up the stairs to me. "What's wrong, Alice?" he asked, sitting next to me on the top step.

_Why do you have to go away, Eddie_? I'd written in my notebook.

"It's just for the evening, pumpkin," he said.

_That's not what I mean_, I said, my eyes feeling hot.

He sighed. "I don't want to leave you, Alice, but we all grow up. I've got to go learn how to be the best Eddie I can be, and then I'll come back, and you'll see how I can fly."

_You're already the best Eddie to me_, I wrote, letting the tears slide down my face.

He wiped the tears from my cheeks with feather-light touches. "I'll always be here with you, Alice, even when I'm at college. I promise. And I'll always come back to you."

He was out late—Port Angeles was kind of far from our house. When he came home, I'd already gone to bed, but I wasn't asleep. It was hard to sleep when Eddie wasn't back in the house. I always knew. As soon as he was back under our roof, my heartbeat would slow down and my eyelids would grow heavy.

He scratched at my door like a cat. "Alice? Are you awake?"

I knocked three times on my headboard to tell him I was still up.

"Can I come in?"

I knocked three times (two times meant no).

He pushed open the door softly. "Do you mind if I turn on a light?" Instead of knocking, I flipped on the little lamp by my bed. He was holding a small brown gift bag in his hand.

I grabbed my notepad and pencil from the nightstand. _What's that_? I wrote.

"It's for you, baby girl."

_Where did you get it_?

"There's this crazy hippie store across from the tattoo parlor. It's practically like Diagon Alley or something. They've got herbs and crystals and all kinds of shit."

_I'm telling Mom you used the "s" word_, I wrote.

He ruffled my hair. "I know you won't."

_Yeah_. I stuck my tongue out at him.

"So open it, okay?"

He plopped the bag onto my lap covered by piles of blankets. The bag smelled like musky incense. I reached in and pulled out this pointy, shiny rock. I looked at it, weighed it in my hand, tossed it from one hand to the other. I put the rock down and wrote, _What is it?_

"Well, I asked the main hippie lady in there if she knew of something good to protect people from fears and barriers. She said that the rock is associated with Pluto."

I wrote, _The cartoon dog?_

He laughed. "No, the god of the underworld. The god of death." My eyes bugged out a little, and he sat on the bed to drape an arm across my shoulders and give me a squeeze. "He's not, like, the Grim Reaper. He's not trying to kill you. He doesn't do that. He's just waiting, like, watching and making sure you're all right, and getting a room all cozy for you in case you ever end up visiting his world."

I nodded. _What's it called?_ I wrote.

"The hippie lady called it 'rainbow obsidian,'" he said.

_Can you write that down for me?_ I wrote.

He wrote it out in extra-neat block letters. He kissed me on the head. "So whenever you miss me, or you wish I were standing by your side to punch some smart aleck in the jaw, you just hold onto that rock and think of me, okay?"

I nodded again and let Eddie tuck me in. I went to sleep with the rock in my hand. I took it with me everywhere I went, and it helped. It was like Eddie was holding my hand when I needed to feel strong.

Mom and I were at the grave. I looked up at Mom's face, and it was pinched. I knew she wanted to cry but didn't want to in front of me. I thought of the strange girl from before—_Bella_, she'd said her name was—and how much better my heart felt after she hugged me and let me cry.

I wrote down, _It's okay if you want to cry. I'll hold you_. I handed Mom the note, and her face just crumpled, and I hugged her as tightly as I could, even though my arms didn't reach very high. "Oh, Alice," she said in between sobs, "you have no idea how precious you are to me."

_I do know_, I wrote, and she tried to smile at me through her tears. Her mouth was a twitchy line. It reminded me of slipping on ice, how you keep thinking you'll be able to regain your footing but end up falling anyway. She gave up trying to smile. I patted her hand to let her know it was okay not to smile.

I put the notepad back in my pocket, and my hand touched the obsidian Eddie had given me. _You're gone forever now, Eddie_, I thought. _You said you'd always be with me. You promised_. I wanted to be angry at him, but I knew there was no point. All the anger in the world wouldn't bring him back—I knew that better than anybody else in the world. Anger never brought anyone back. _I miss you, Eddie_, I thought, rubbing the stone.

I remembered what Eddie had told me, about the rock being connected to the god of the underworld: _He's just waiting, like, watching and making sure you're all right, and getting a room all cozy for you in case you ever end up visiting his world_.

It seemed to me that Eddie needed my rock more now than I did. I didn't want Mom to see me drop the rock, because she'd ask, or she'd pick it up, and I just didn't want to have this conversation with her. I was too tired. So I stepped away from her. She was lost, staring at the gravestone anyway. I dropped the rock by the tree where the strange girl had hidden, and kicked the dead pine needles over it until it was hidden from sight. It smelled like my dream. _You'll find it, won't you, Eddie_? I asked.

I heard an owl hoot one, two, three times. I'd take that as my yes.

I tugged on my mom's sleeve. _It's getting dark_, I wrote.

"Of course, sweetheart," she said, and we walked hand in hand back to the car.

I didn't know if I'd be able to sleep without Eddie's obsidian. I hadn't slept well at all since he … went away. _I miss you, Eddie_, I thought as hard as I could. _My heart hurts. Where are you? Will you tell me a story? _

I lay awake in the dark for a long time, counting my heartbeats. It wasn't the same without the obsidian in my hand. I snapped on my little lamp and went to my desk. I pulled out a bunch of my old notepads, hoping I'd find the right one. It took a good fifteen minutes or so, but I found what I wanted. I ripped out the piece of paper where he'd written carefully, _RAINBOW OBSIDIAN. _I folded the paper in half, and then into a triangle. It was roughly the size of the real rock. I clasped my hand around it and let my thoughts wander.

_Is Pluto getting your room ready?_

I tried to picture what Eddie's room might look like in the underworld. There would be a comfortable bed and at least three guitars. Maybe there would be a mini-fridge. I pictured it kind of like one of his dorm rooms when we'd come visit during one of the Parents' Weekends. Maybe it would be a little tidier. Maybe Pluto had maid service, like at a hotel. Eddie's underwear wouldn't be all over the floor then, and there would be no pizza boxes. I decorated his room in my head (beanbag chairs, a Lava lamp, because Eddie always had a Lava lamp, piles and piles of vinyl records, maybe an accordion) until I fell asleep.

I woke up in the same weird place I'd dreamed about in the car. The colors, the smells, it was all so real. Before, in the car, I had felt alone in this place, but now I heard a voice. It was familiar.

I crept along the edge of the woods toward the shiny castle, and I peered from behind a tree. I saw a woman talking angrily to herself. But she was talking as if there were real people there listening, and I wondered if there were invisible people or if she was just practicing. Her hair was familiar, and when she turned around, I recognized her from the graveyard.

_Hi, Bella_, I thought at her.

She started running toward me, and I thought maybe she heard me, but her eyes were closed. She ran with her arms in front of her, with a big pole-thing in her hand, as if she were playing some kind of game. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be here, so I ran deeper into the trees and hid, the same way she'd hidden from my mother today. I saw her scramble around a tree hollow, pulling out some old fabric.

She was awfully upset. I wanted to go to her and hug her, but I felt like I was trespassing, that I shouldn't have been here. So I tried to be as quiet as I could. She found something—I couldn't see it—and she curled up into a little ball. I tiptoed closer, and her eyes were closed. She was so still; it was like she was dead. I was good at being quiet, so I was able to get close enough to see that she was still breathing. I touched her on the forehead, trying to say, _You'll be okay_, but she didn't move. I heard beeping, and I woke up in my bed, remembering that girl's face, twisted and struggling.

I thought of her all through breakfast, my shower, putting on my uniform. I couldn't stop seeing her face. Mom drove me to school, and I thought of Bella in the woods, so vulnerable. I didn't realize I'd taken out my pencil and notepad until I glanced down and seen where I'd written, _I can see you_. I looked out the window. We were across from the graveyard again. I tugged on my mom's arm and pointed outside.

"Alice, we're going to be late."

I pounded on the glass with my fist, then made a move to undo my belt. I would jump out again, and Mom knew it.

"Fine, Alice, fine. But just for a second." She stopped the car.

I unbuckled my belt and threw the door open, not shutting it behind me. I didn't wait for Mom. I just ran as fast as I could. "Alice! Alice!" she called after me, but I kept running.

I ripped the note out of the pad. _What should I do, Eddie?_ I asked. I folded it in half and dropped it, but it looked sad, like discarded trash. It would blow away and be forgotten. I picked up the folded paper again and wrote on the outside, _Hi_. Somehow that made the note seem less lonely.

The wind felt like it was ruffling my hair, so I leaned my face up to the sky and thought, _Hi, Eddie_.


	6. Zündhölzer

**A/N: These are all leading to the oneshot for Fandom Gives Back purchased by adorablecullens and algonquinrt.**

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Zündhölzer**

Something was happening. Things were shifting; I could feel it. There was overlap, somehow, between Alice's thoughts and that Voice that never stopped calling my name. When they'd been together, I'd felt it drag me down as if I'd been weighted and thrown into the ocean. And now, it felt as though there were times those two voices spoke to me at the same time, from the same, impossible, faraway place.

For one thing I was excessively grateful in death: that I finally could hear Alice's voice. I'd always understood her more than anyone else, and we'd had our own secret symbols and gestures. But to _hear_ her thoughts … it made me want to swoop her up in my arms and spin her around while she silently screamed with glee. Her voice in my thoughts was lovely, lovelier than I ever could have imagined.

I wished the whole world could hear how sweet her voice was. But then again, having it exist only in my mind made it rather a sacred thing, another secret between Alice and me.

_You're too precious for this world_, I thought, missing her.

But the other one—the Voice—I found myself seeking her in the air around me. It wasn't too hard, because I was almost always in her thoughts. She cried out with as much sorrow as a mother, or a lover, and yet with such purity and earnestness that she was something Other. I wished I could learn more about her. On earth, I could never hear Alice's voice, and in death, I could never see this person's face.

Why was I still here? Was this what everyone's afterlife was like? All this solitude and breathing in the bereavement of those who'd loved you? It didn't seem right to me, somehow. Something was holding me back, tying me here. Was it the grief? Were too many people missing me, their tears chaining me to the soil where my body would be buried?

Once, for just a second, I felt my particles being siphoned into something small, pressed through a narrow passageway. I could almost see, it felt like … there were light and shadowy forms. _Heaven_, I thought. _I'm finally going to cross_. But then everything reversed; my particles scattered again, and I was back in my solitude, both everywhere and nowhere all at once.

What day was that? Was any of this real?

As the time went by (hours? years? generations?), the world began to fade away bit by bit, both the voices and the memories. Part of me was glad for it—maybe it meant my loved ones were moving on. Hazily I could feel my brother's thoughts of me, cloudy and confused, and, strangely, much the same from my love, my earthly love. Their thoughts wove in similar waves, in synch. _Find each other_, I thought. It seemed to me that my absence had eroded both of them in corresponding ways, that together they seemed to make one whole person. And that was okay. It was more than okay; it was _right_. It was the way things should go, and I was happy for this, that my brother and my earthly love should find each other. They didn't know it yet, but _I_ knew. It was like that: some things I just knew now. They would be happy. And maybe that was the purpose of my death, if my death had any purpose at all.

And I needed so badly to believe it did.

There _needed_ to be a reason for this, for my life cut so short. There had to be a reason, or it seemed all so wrong, so unfair. I'd never see Alice grow up. I'd never have children. I'd never write another song. All the things I'd never get to see or do again, never again smell my mother's perfume when I kissed her on the cheek whenever I'd come home. I'd never see that shining light in my dad's eyes when he'd make a special trip to see me perform. I'd never trade insults with my brother until we were both on the floor, gasping in pain from laughter. Never feel my earthly love's silky hair on my neck.

But she would continue to live. They all would. They would go on; the days would turn into nights, the nights into new days and new sunrises, and one day I would be but a dull ache, a fading bruise.

But the Voice, she … did not seem like she would be okay. I worried for her. I prayed, although I knew not to whom: _Give her happiness. Just one day, one moment, anything_. The Voice was jagged, filled with pain and longing and loss. She was simply _lost_; I could feel her pulled in so many directions at once, as if her heart were in pieces scattered throughout the universe. She never felt whole, and it was different from the pieces missing from my brother and my love.

She was unfixable.

I hoped, that when I could feel her and Alice pulling me down in that same, faraway place, that they could comfort each other. I couldn't tell.

How strange it was to observe the world but not be part of it. "Observe" was maybe too strong a word, since I couldn't actually _see_ anything. It was more as if I could feel the terrain of someone's emotional landscape, taste their sorrow. Sometimes I could feel the fragments of a person's soul that I knew would fit with someone else's. It was a strange and wondrous thing to be so aware.

And every day, I still searched for my lost baby sister Emmy. _Are you there? Are you looking for me too?_ I thought it odd that if I did find her, even though she had been so tiny when she had been taken away from us, that she would know so much more, having been on the other side that much longer than I.

I was searching for Emmy when I felt it again, two voices of sorrow singing melody and descant to the other, though neither voice knew it. They were close, the Voice and my best friend. They didn't even know how close. _This way_, I tried to coax, trying to guide the Voice to the heart of my friend.

I felt something in me like a magnesium flare, a loud pop, a blinding light, and the sensation of being _drawn down_ was almost unbearable. There was music, my friend, and the Voice, all together. It was so much that I felt almost dizzy. Jasper and I had been so connected—I remembered reading once that musicians often displayed what could be described as psychic knowing, because of how attuned we were to the cues of others, their breathing, their phrasing—when you played in an ensemble, you all became part of one body. And maybe this was why, when I felt Jasper in the same place as the Voice, I got flickers of images, a match struck against sandpaper, a flare of a light, a glimpse of a face. _Brown hair. Long brown hair_. It was beautiful. I wanted to see more, but I could not. A song floated back to me, and had I had vocal cords, I would have hummed it. Had I had fingers, I would have formed the chords and picked out the melody. Instead, I poured myself into Jasper's head and tried to see what he saw. Again, only flashes, a match struck on sandpaper, the smell of phosphorous, a glimpse in the spaces between the shutting of eyes.

The moment was slipping away, the two worlds shifting their orbitals, and I cried out with everything I could: _Don't leave her. Don't leave me. Don't leave us_. They shifted again, once again on the same path. Did I make that happen?

For ages they traveled together, tracing the same path on the surface of the earth. And it was like the matches, desperately struck against the surface time and time again, trying to catch her face in a split second of light. I saw an eyelash, a tear rolling down a pale cheek, and I felt warmth, like that strange feeling when you pass your finger through the flame of a candle. The flame licks your finger, but it doesn't burn. That's what it was like, as if my whole being were passing through a lit candle so quickly that all I felt was a quick flash of warmth, so quick I wasn't sure if it had happened at all. An illusion.

And all the while, in my head I was lighting matches, trying to see, trying to hear, trying to _understand_.

Their orbitals had shifted again, parting ways, and I heard just two words:

_Bella Swan_.

I knew that name; somewhere in the back of my head I remembered something. Not enough, not the whole picture, but something.

_Thank you, Jasper, for carrying me here_, I thought as the last match died out, leaving me once again in darkness.


	7. Kleiner als sein Daumen

**A/N: Uh, yeah, we're still leading up to the one-shot purchased for Fandom Gives Back by adorablecullens and algonquinrt. **

**Disclaimer: Nope, still not mine. I just got some Buxom lip gloss from Sephora though.**

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Kleiner als sein Daumen**

For a few days now, I'd been coming here when I slept. I'd always hold Eddie's paper in my hand, the paper I'd folded into a triangle like one of those paper football things that he was always trying to get me to play. _Footballs aren't triangles_, I'd write on my notepad, pouting. _Play Barbies instead?_ Eddie was so good that he'd sit down with me on the floor of my bedroom and dress Ken up for dinner or weddings or baseball, because those were the only Ken outfits I had. He'd put on a ridiculous cockney accent, as bad as Dick van Dyke's in _Mary Poppins_. "'Ello, guv'nor!" he'd say, bobbing Ken up and down, and I'd pelt him with tiny Barbie high heels. "It's a jolly 'olly 'oliday!" he'd say, pretending not to notice even when I hit him right between the eyes with a pink Barbie boot. Why was Ken British? That made no sense.

_Mary Poppins _was on TV the evening we had that memorial at school, and I'd watched it alone in the cold basement with a blanket wrapped around me. I sat perfectly still, barely breathing, hoping it was a sign, hoping it was Eddie saying hi. _Are you tapdancing with penguins where you are, Eddie?_ I missed him so much, even the teasing. Maybe especially the teasing.

Dick van Dyke made a sad substitute for Eddie, I'd thought as I watched, wrapping the blanket around me more tightly. The blanket was a sad substitute for Eddie's arms as well. I'd sniffled silently into the rough wool and didn't come upstairs when Mom said it was time for dinner.

Every night since I'd left the obsidian for Eddie, I went to bed with his paper talisman in my hand. And I always came here.

Sometimes I would come to these woods and be alone. And sometimes _she_ would be here. I didn't dare approach her—I didn't have my notebook with me and wouldn't have been able to explain myself. Anyway, it felt like this was _her_ place. I was trespassing. I knew my dreams weren't usually like this.

She fought and screamed and wept over things I couldn't see, and then sometimes she'd disappear again.

I found it all very confusing.

I sometimes followed her, keeping to the shadows. It was hard when the wind started to blow. I was cold, and the leaves were falling around me, stripping the trees of their clothing, of my cover. I would crouch down low. I was small for my age; I knew that. I could make myself smaller. Maybe I could fit inside an acorn here. Maybe I was no bigger than Eddie's thumb.

I saw her run across the bridge over the huge stream, and I followed her once she'd disappeared into the fog. I crawled on my hands and knees, not wanting her to see me, even though she was far enough ahead.

I heard her arguing with someone, and I just got a feeling of dread in my stomach, a feeling like when I was hiding in the cupboard, waiting for that man to leave, that bad man who'd taken away my real mommy, the one who was an angel now. I had been so quiet he hadn't known I was there. She came to me right away, you know, brushing my cheek as I folded myself as small as I could by the big bag of flour. _Stay quiet, Alice, _she'd said, kissing me and feeling like a beam of sunlight. _Stay quiet, or he'll find you_.

"Okay, Mommy," I'd said with only my lips, and it was like I could feel her hand stroking my throat, making it numb.

_That's my girl. Not a sound. Don't be afraid. I'll watch over you always_.

And then she was gone.

Bella was talking to someone who gave me that bad feeling again; I felt like I was back in the cupboard. _Mommy, Mommy, Mommy_, I called in my head, but she wasn't in this place. I wanted to shout out, "Look out! Be careful! He's lying!" I didn't want Bella to be hurt. I didn't know her, but I'd felt love when she'd held me in the graveyard. That was love. That was a mother's touch. I'd had two already, so I knew.

I could hear cruel, cold laughter around Bella's angry voice, and my body felt cramped again. I could remember the smell of the flour, the dust, the cinnamon, the rush of wind as my real mommy whooshed past me as she said goodbye. _Mommy, can you see Eddie?_ I wondered. But what would my real mommy care about Eddie? She didn't know who he was, did she?

I was sitting on the bridge, lost, trying to remember what my real mommy had smelled like. She used to sing to me, maybe. The bridge swayed in the wind. She used to rock me like that, maybe.

I heard running, and Bella was flying toward me. I didn't want to be seen, but I didn't have time to run away. _I am smaller than an acorn. I can fit inside a thimble. I am no bigger than Eddie's thumb_, I thought, squinting my eyes and holding my breath. Bella ran past me, as tall as a skyscraper, and I was curled inside a knot in one of the wooden planks, no bigger than Eddie's thumb.

When I'd heard her reach the other side, I exhaled again, and as I let the breath out of my lungs, I grew back to Alice size. I walked back over the bridge to follow Bella again, but she was already gone.

Then there was _that_ night. The night that everything changed. I woke up in her forest, and I could feel someone pulling me. Was it Eddie? Could he see me here? I could hear Bella, and she was angry. I ran toward her voice, hoping she was all right.

"Who's there?" she said, and I hid behind a tree.

I ran away as fast as I could, to the bridge.

I walked over it like a big girl, like I had seen Bella do, unafraid, furious, a warrior. She wasn't here yet, but somehow I knew she would be soon. I reached the edge of the bridge, and there was nothing but white, like a brand new sheet of paper, like a thought I hadn't written down yet. I stepped down, expecting to fall, but there was ground in the whiteness, even though it was like walking into nothing.

"Hello, Sleeper," that awful voice said, and I wanted to hide my face. _Sleeper? Who was he talking to?_

"Are you going to stay to watch?" the voice asked, and as I tried to hide, tried to shrink again to the size of Eddie's thumb, the man was there. "It ends tonight," he said, looking up at an invisible clock, and then right at me. "You may stay if you like, Sleeper."

He saw me. He was talking to me. _My name is Alice_, I wanted to say. I almost wrote it on the ground with my finger, but something told me not to tell him my real name. I felt something like the cool hand of my fleeing mommy on my neck, warning me to stay quiet, stay still.

He waved his hand, and everything grew gigantic again, or I was shrinking again. I was a speck of dust on the ground. I was the air. I was everywhere and nowhere.

And then Bella came, hair flying, fists clenched, her beautiful white dress fluttering behind her like angel's wings. The man seemed surprised, and I saw him wave his gigantic hand, making things appear in the nothingness. A chair, a pillow, some pillars. It was hard to see very much. My eyes felt too small.

She was screaming, and he was talking calmly, and then she did _something_ that made him furious. I couldn't see. I willed myself to grow to Alice size again, but I couldn't. I wanted to wake up. I wanted to leave.

I was a speck of dust floating around the room, and I could see Bella now, writhing on the floor, clutching something to her chest. She was choking, having trouble breathing. She made me think of my real mommy, gagging on her own blood. _Stop it!_ I wanted to yell to the man, but I had no body parts. I was just dust.

His voice changed then. He sounded different. "It hurts because you're dying, dear one," I heard him say, bending down to whisper it into her ear. She was writhing on the ground, and I could almost taste her pain, and I wanted to be in my cupboard, hidden, shut away from this horror.

Her body grew still, and then she disappeared, just like that.

I felt something like feathers brush past me, as tiny as I was, and I heard a sad voice say, "So it was you all along?" I felt something touch my hair. "I'm glad. I'm glad it was you."

And then everything began to fade away. Something hurt inside me, heavy and sharp and hot, and I felt as if I were being turned inside out.

I screamed.

I was awake, screaming in my bed.

My voice was unfamiliar to me. I looked for Eddie's paper, but it wasn't there. I scrambled on my hands and knees and felt around in the dark, trying to find the triangle of paper that meant he was with me. Gone. I pulled on my hair, and this stranger's voice came out of me, screaming, not sounding even human.

I was awake, and she was gone.

_I'm glad it was you_, I heard the voice say again.

I was awake, and I couldn't stop crying her name.


	8. Der Ewigkeitsanfang

**A/N: Finally! Finally! Here is the one-shot purchased for Fandom Gives Back by adorablecullens and algonquinrt. **

**Some days I like to think this is what happens at the end of Sleepers. On my more cynical days, it's not. You can decide for yourself if you want to believe it. Or maybe you will believe it today but not tomorrow. As always, the choice is yours.**

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Der Ewigkeitsanfang**

She was dying in two places at once, choking, skin blistering, her dream world and her real life coming together at last. And in that moment, in that final moment before her heart stopped, she understood fully. See, she'd always believed that He was the Sleeper, but in that final second, which stretched and pulled for an age—a frozen moment, freezing although she was being burned alive—she understood that the Sleeper had been someone else entirely: his sister, the one for whom she was indirectly willing to die, because she believed bringing Him back would make the child happy. _I did that_, she thought as she slipped away. _I did something good with my life. Alice is going to be okay. I don't know how, but she is_.

As her spirit was whisked away, she saw Alice in the throne room with her. Had she always been there? Why hadn't she seen her before? Alice was just a cloud, but Bella still just _knew_ that the cloud was Alice. It was as if in dying, she could finally see clearly—see the hidden things in the room, see the true meaning of James' words. _I'm glad it was you_, she said to Alice as she passed through the veil into that other consciousness. And she was; she _was_ glad. Her life had meaning now. It didn't matter if she hadn't made anything of herself, that she'd never made people proud or accomplished anything that would go down in history books. Even if no one would ever know, she had made Alice's life better. Alice would be all right now. Bella would have cried in relief, but she was being taken apart and reassembled particle by particle on the other side.

_I forgive you_, she thought to James as the last bits of her slipped away. She'd never know if he had planned for this all along, for her to die "for nothing," perhaps, in his mind. Or maybe he'd read into her true heart and seen that what she wanted most of all was for her life to matter. He'd helped her make her life matter. Maybe he was just messing with her, but if he that had been his intent, it hadn't worked. She was triumphant, full of joy at just having been able to give this child something, to be someone nurturing, someone healing. She'd done that.

The hows and whys didn't matter.

There was light, just as she'd always been told, such beautiful, warm light. Not burning, like her last, painful moments on earth, but gentle and healing. Slowly her particles came back together, and she had form, her familiar form. There was a woman clothed in blue and starlight waiting for her. "Welcome," she said warmly, with her arms extended.

Bella didn't know her, but she ran into her arms instinctively. "Am I home?"

"Yes, finally. You did well," said the woman in blue proudly.

The woman's dress was impossibly shiny for cloth. There must have been real stars woven into it. She thought of what Rosalie might say if she saw this dress, how she'd want to ball the whole thing up and stick it in her mouth. Bella laughed to herself before remembering: _Rosalie. I'll never see her again. She won't know. _

"Stop!" she said, as the woman was leading her away. "I … I have to go back."

"You can't go back," she said, shaking her head gently. She motioned forward at a hazy form. "Do you see? He's waiting for you."

"He?"

"He's been stuck, unable to rest before his body was at rest. But you did that too. You did well, Warrior Maiden, and I thank you, both for his sake and for mine."

He wasn't all there yet, a shadowy figure in fog and mist, a dream version of himself. The outline, though, so familiar, so like that shape burned into her retinas. "He's here?" she asked, clenching her fists, afraid of the answer, afraid of hoping too much.

"You brought him home. And he's been waiting for you."

Bella combed her fingers through her hair. "Am I real? Is this body real?"

"You are as you see yourself," said the Woman in Blue.

"Do I look all right?" Bella straightened out her dress, her long white dress she'd last been wearing in the dreaming, in James' palace.

"You've always been radiant. You are clothed in your capacity to love," she said. "Don't be afraid. Hold my hand, and we can walk together."

She slipped her hand in the woman's, and it was like the lightest feather's touch. She shyly took a few steps forward, not tripping over her long hem. The shadowy figure in the distance grew a little more solid.

It was definitely him. She knew, and her heart leapt with hope and anticipation and joy for a second before she remembered that he had someone he loved on the other side. She couldn't interfere. He wouldn't be hers.

But she knew that anyway. She'd always known that.

She heard him speak, but it was like a voice underwater, murky, distorted. _Bella? Bella Swan_? It sounded as if he were calling her name. But no, he couldn't be. He didn't know her. She reached his hand toward his shadowy one, and there was only cold clamminess, nothing solid yet.

"It takes time," murmured the Woman in Blue. "He's been stuck for a long while."

She wanted this moment to last forever, the moment of hope right before she found out that nothing had changed. "Please," she said, tugging on the hand of the Woman in Blue. "I need to go back, just for a moment. I need to let them know I'm all right. And I am. I'm all right, and I'm not afraid anymore—of anything."

"But he's waking up now—don't you see?" And indeed he was, slowly coming into sharper focus. Bella reached her hand out again, and the mist was warmer, maybe a little more present. Maybe there was a pulse. She felt a rush through her like birds' wings fluttering.

_Rosalie_, she thought again.

"Please, just give me five minutes. They have to know I'll be all right."

"There will be pain. I can't reverse what has already happened to your body," the Woman in Blue said.

"I don't care how much it hurts. I'll be okay."

"I know you will," she said, kissing Bella gently on the forehead. "Five minutes of human time." And then she wrapped Bella in the folds of her dress of evening and starlight, and Bella was squeezed through a narrow passageway, and her lungs weren't working, and everything hurt so much she couldn't even cry out—she couldn't draw breath to cry.

The pain was agonizing, enough to break her. But she was already broken. She found it strange to wake up in her bed, and she didn't want to look at her skin, what had happened in the fire. She didn't have much time. She woke up already drawing in her sketchbook, on the page with the square of velvet from her homecoming dress. Before she even woke up again, she had been trying to draw the feeling of holding hands with the shape that wasn't quite all there yet. She thought she'd felt a pulse in that last hand squeeze. She tried to draw that, the excitement, the _maybe_, the _I'm okay, really; don't worry about me_. She was drawing as fast as she could, even though she was just a shell of a body, already used up, existing in a sliver of borrowed life. How much time left now? Was there enough time to write a note? Hastily she scrawled a request for the finder to mail the sketchpad to Rosalie. She'd understand. She'd get it. Rosalie always understood her, even when Bella didn't say a word.

It would have to be enough, because her time was up, and she was slipping away again. It was a relief not to be in her human skin, in the smoke and burning and the smell of death everywhere. As she passed again through to the white light, dying while awake instead of dying in the dreaming, she remembered that she hadn't said goodbye to Charlie.

A sob caught in her throat. _Will Charlie be okay_?

In the in-between, she could feel Alice, the little soul she'd saved. As if she were making a backup copy of her human life, she focused on little Alice and poured out all her thoughts, all her memories, every private moment she'd ever had, as sparse as they were, with Edward. She thought of Charlie, singing a song of love from her heart to Alice's, singing of all he'd done for her, even when he didn't know it. _He'll love you too, little one_, she thought. _Take care of him. I know you can_.

She didn't know if Alice got her message, but it was enough to have told her, to have told someone, in that split second, her whole life and the stories of everyone she'd loved in her short time on the earth, like a film montage of her life played in fast forward, flickers of life and memory and those few unexpected moments of kindness, but mostly of love. For even though she hadn't accomplished much in her life, she had loved with all her heart, loved even when she was unnoticed, unloved, unwanted, unworthy. She had _loved_.

_I love you too, little one_, she said in that last moment before she was wrapped inside the night sky of the Woman in Blue, free from pain, once again awake.

"Did you accomplish what you needed?"

Bella nodded. "Thank you."

"He's waiting. He's here now, a bit confused. It's been hard for him. It was hard finding all the pieces. And it's harder when there's so much time between when you leave one plane and enter this one."

His back was toward her, but oh, the outline of his body, his rumpled hair. Now that he looked solid, she dared not touch him. But damn it, she could talk to him now. She _would_ talk to him now. She'd tell him who she was, and he would know her—she didn't care on what level.

"Edward?" she asked haltingly, wanting to touch him but knowing she oughtn't.

He turned around slowly, confused. "That voice … I know it." He was facing her now. "It's you," he said hoarsely, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Bella couldn't help turning around, sure there must be someone else standing behind her. The Woman in Blue had conveniently disappeared. "Me?" she said, pointing at herself.

"You're the Voice," he said, as if she'd understand what that meant. "You've been calling me."

"Have I?" Bella brought her hands up to her cheeks, certain that she was blushing.

"You wept for me more than anyone else, after."

She dropped her gaze. "You … could _hear me_?"

"Faintly at first, and then more and more. I tried to find you." He had taken a few steps forward, and they stood toe to toe, although Bella still could not bring herself to look up. She was embarrassed that he'd been hearing her thoughts that whole time, her crazy, selfish thoughts.

"Why are you hiding?" he whispered.

"I don't know," she said, shrugging. "I … this … agh!" She wrung her hands in frustration. "I … was not expecting this, any of it. I … I've never known what to say around you, Edward Cullen. You don't even know who I am."

"You're Bella Swan."

Her head snapped up. "How do you know me? Do you remember me?" Her heart leapt in her chest. "Do you … _know_ me?"

He looked sheepish. "I … I'm sorry to say that I don't really remember you, not from before."

Her face fell. _I should have known. I'm so forgettable_.

"But that was my own fault for not seeing you. I've been trying to see you now ever since … since I died."

"What do you mean?"

"I was in a strange place, like a waiting room, except without _Highlights_ magazines and _Us Weekly_. And I didn't think I had an appointment or seem to have a body. And nothing was ever happening."

Bella remembered the place she'd been in for a time, the white place of nothing, where all she'd been able to hear was James mocking her. "I was somewhere like that once," she said, shuddering.

"But every time someone thought of me, missed me, I could hear it—I could _feel_ it. It was like a tug on my heart, except I didn't know where my heart was. And your voice, I found myself listening the hardest for it."

"Do you think I'm crazy?" she asked, not being able to meet his eyes.

"No, your voice was beautiful, and it was killing me … I … guess I was already dead … but you know what I mean," he said, trailing off and shifting his weight from foot to foot. "I just … wanted so badly to see your face, to know who you were."

"But you did know, almost," she said, daring to look him in the face.

"I wish I could remember. But I could see your memories, sometimes. You gave me a memory of me and Alice playing on the swings—you know Alice, my little sister?"

"Yes, I know her," she said, thinking of her last moments in the dreaming. "She's going to be all right."

"When did you see us, you know, in that memory? I had forgotten it completely, and you made me see her face again. You made me remember. It meant so much to me, in that time when I had nothing."

She smiled awkwardly. She didn't want to tell him too much, but then again, what was there to lose now? "I was walking to the library, and I saw you guys in the park. I watched for a long time." She shook her head. "God, you probably think I'm nuts. I … just couldn't look away. You were so _good_ to her, the way you were so good to me. You were my hero, and so much more." This was the most she'd ever said to him, but even so, it wasn't even the tip of the iceberg of all she'd always left unsaid.

"I … was good to you? How?" They still stood toe to toe, not touching.

"You … did something, something so small, but it was my whole world. It changed everything. My whole life could have gone differently."

He smiled, crinkly-eyed, mouth curled up in a half smile. "I did something? But I don't remember. I wish I did. I really wish I did."

"You … oh it's so stupid," she said. "You'll just laugh."

He finally touched her, bringing his hand to her cheek. She gasped from the unexpected touch, not even knowing if there was such thing as real touching where they were. "I promise you, I won't laugh."

"Um," she said, momentarily forgetting her train of thought. "You once put an apple sticker on my car."

"An apple sticker?" He dropped his hand and wrinkled his brow.

"Yeah. I told you it was stupid."

"Wait … was it an old, beat-up red truck?"

She smiled the tiniest smile somewhere deep inside her. "Yeah," she whispered, remembering how her heart had soared at his tiny gesture.

"I remember now—I remember!" His face lit up. "The red truck—that was yours."

"You saved me, you know. Why did you do it?"

"Crowley was being a dick," he said, closing his eyes and trying to place himself again in that moment. "And you looked so sad. You always looked sad."

"You remember that too?"

"Now I do. It's weird. It's like, now that you're here, I can go back in my head and see the things I thought I'd forgotten. It's like it was all saved up there, like surveillance video."

"I never forgot anything," she said, sounding a little rueful. She missed the feel of his palm on her cheek. She could still feel the heat of his hand there, imagining his handprint glowing on her face. But she remembered again, _He's not mine. He belongs to someone else, even if she isn't here_.

She walked a bit away, and a large, flat rock appeared, warm as if it had been directly in a sunbeam. She sat on it, kicking her legs in front of her. "Do you remember Angela Weber?"

"Angela Weber," he repeated to himself. He closed his eyes again. "Oh," he said.

"You liked her."

"That was a long time ago," he said, coming to sit by her on the rock. "I was a kid. She was nice. She had kind eyes."

"Do you remember dancing with me? At homecoming?"

He closed his eyes again. "I'm having trouble," he said, making her heart drop in her chest. "Maybe it would help if we held hands."

"Okay," she breathed, watching their fingers lace together, her appendage somehow less afraid than she was to touch him.

She closed her eyes too, and remembered one of her most precious memories, feeling his hands on her back, being close enough to smell his soap and cheap cologne. Such a boy smell. She remembered being close enough to see his teenage stubble coming in. She had wanted to touch his cheek, to feel the sandpaper of his face. Of course she hadn't dared.

"Was it out of pity?" she asked.

"I don't think so," he said. "Although you always had those sad eyes. I recognized something in those eyes, maybe something I'd seen in Alice's."

"So it was kind of pity," she said.

He squeezed her hand. "It was so long ago. Those are dead memories. They're irrelevant. I'm here now. And you're here. We don't have to relive history; we can create our future."

"Wait, wait," she said, dropping his hand. "You said 'our.'"

"Yeah," he said, trying to take her hand again.

"But … what about _her_?"

"Angela?"

"No." Bella scooted away from him a little. She was going to have to tell him more about how much she knew. "I … um … I used to check up on you, to see what you were up to and stuff. You were engaged, weren't you?"

"Oh, Tanya," he said.

"Yes, Tanya."

"I was."

"And aren't you still now? Isn't that how love is supposed to work? Never ending, spanning all time and space?"

He folded his hands on his lap. "I don't know," he shrugged. "I miss her, but … it's strange, when I was waiting in between, it was like I realized that she wasn't meant to be with me, not for real. I was only … the means for her to meet the right person. I was just a step to her real destiny." He furrowed his brow. "I mean, I don't know for sure. And of course I miss her, and maybe I'm rationalizing so I won't feel bad for everyone I left behind. But I feel like I know it'll be okay. She wasn't meant to be mine, not forever, anyway. And I'm … okay with that. It's all different from this side."

She turned to him. "Sounds a little convenient. Like maybe you're just lonely."

"Bella, I've been listening to your voice since I've been … in between. Your voice is what woke me up; I'm certain of it. I might have been stuck in that in-between place forever. _You_ did that. I don't know how, but you did. You called out to me, and it changed everything."

She had a flash of that feeling of pride for changing Alice's life, and it flickered through her a little longer at the idea that she might have made a difference for him too.

"It was your voice, Bella, and I've wanted nothing more than to see your face since I've been in between."

"Me? Why me?"

"You loved me, even though I didn't know you. You grieved for me like no one else, and who was I to you? I was no one."

"You were my whole life," she admitted sadly. "I kissed you once, I think. Do you remember?"

"Hold my hand," he said, and she complied. She relived the memory, the tequila haze, the birthday boy.

"_Dwardlen_?" he said, laughing a little.

"Was that you? I was never sure. I knew that day was your birthday," she admitted, once again showing she knew too much about him, when he knew almost nothing about her.

"I … I'm not sure where I ended up that night. It was kind of a haze. I vomited, like, a lot."

"You kept complaining about being dizzy. You thought you were on a boat."

"That does sound like something I'd say," he offered.

"If that was you, you were adorable. And hilarious."

"You kissed me?"

"I did."

"How?"

"I was drunk. Liquid courage, you know."

"No, I mean, how did you kiss me? Can you … show me? I can't remember for sure—I was really, really trashed."

Her face burned, but she closed her eyes and tried to recreate the inside of the pub in her head. _There_. There it was. She felt around until Edward grasped her hands in his, and she sat on his lap. It was very different trying this sober. "I told you I was Liv Tyler and that I loved you. And then I think I kissed you like this." She brushed her lips against his cheek.

"And what did I do?" he whispered.

"You just loudly demanded to know if you were on a boat."

"I was a fool," he said, wrapping his arms around her waist.

She didn't want to open her eyes. She didn't want this moment not to be real. She expected to wake up at any moment, but her dreams were never this good.

She leaned her head against his shoulder. "Is this okay?" she asked, wondering if she were being too bold.

"It's perfect."

He hummed to her a little, and she said, "I know that song. You wrote that."

"You know my music?"

"Yes," she whispered, still keeping her eyes shut. "It's what made me, you know," she hesitated for a moment, afraid to admit everything, "… love you … in the first place—the way you looked when you played in junior high, like the whole world melted away. I wanted to go away to a place like that, and you just didn't give a damn what anyone else thought."

"I … didn't know anyone saw me that way."

"You were so beautiful in that moment. You could have had seven arms, and you would have still been so beautiful. The music transformed you. I always knew you'd grow up to be someone amazing."

"Well, shit, Isabella Swan, why didn't you ever say anything?"

She thought a moment before speaking. "I was nobody. I couldn't speak, especially not to you. And obviously I didn't register at all on your radar … so , you know," she sighed. "I guess I never expected my life to be happy."

"Bella," he said in her ear, "I think I've been waiting my whole life for you. I just didn't know it."

She was definitely dreaming. Guys said stuff like this only in dreams and fantasies and chick flicks. She was going to force herself to wake up, because if things went on this way, she'd just be too sad when it all melted away. She stood up and opened her eyes, prepared for the worst.

And he was still there, looking at her.

"You're not real," she accused, poking him in the shoulder.

"Ow," he said, rubbing the spot she'd poked.

"Did that really hurt? Can we feel pain?"

"I don't know. But it hurt my feelings," he said with a smirk.

"Jasper told me you were a smartass," she said.

"I know, I think."

"What? You think you know you're a smartass?"

"No, I mean … I think I was there. I could hear things, bits of things, and I wanted him to stay near you so I could find out who you were."

"You … did that? You were there?" She hid her face in her sleeve.

"Don't hide," he said, tugging at her arm. "Why are you embarrassed?"

"Do I even have to tell you? To think you were … _watching_?"

"I couldn't _see_ you," he said. "Only flashes of hair and eyes, those sad eyes. I didn't know what was happening, not for sure, but I heard your name, and that's what made me begin to remember."

She sat down again next to him. "So, uh, what happens now? Where is everyone else? Is it just us?"

"That woman in blue, she said we had a moment here to ourselves, and then she'd bring us to see the others."

"How long is this moment?" she asked, staring at her hands, once again clean and whole.

He took one of her clean hands and held it to his mouth. "I'm not sure," he said against her skin. "But I know how I want to use it."

"You do?" she asked, closing her eyes again at the feeling of his warm breath on her skin. "What … how … ?" She couldn't finish her question, but he answered it all the same with a kiss, a real kiss, not a missed connection in a bar, not a kiss spied from inside Charlie's cruiser, but him kissing her, Edward and Bella, Bella and Edward, kissing each other for now and for forever. There was no mistake in this moment about knowing who the other one was.

Did she still have neurons that fired? Did she still have a body that could be loved in that earthly way? His kisses were like fire on her skin, branding her without pain. She was dizzy, unable to accept this reality. "Wait, wait," she said, trying to catch her breath.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, holding her face in his hands, touching his forehead to hers.

"I … just … this is all … I don't know what's going on. This is more than I ever wanted, more than I thought I ever deserved."

"What this _is_, is _right_," he said, kissing her again. "This is the only truth I know here. And I'm a poor reward, but you deserve everything in your heart. No one has loved the way you have loved, and I didn't know. And sometimes I think I'm lucky; I'm _lucky_ I died, because maybe otherwise I still wouldn't have known that kind of love existed."

"I gave up my life for you," she said. "I thought I could bring you back. Does that sound crazy?"

He looked at her so long that she felt silly. She turned away in shame until he spoke. "I wouldn't have asked you to do that. You should have lived and fallen in love and had a long life, as jealous as I would have been from this side. All I wanted for you once I heard your voice was for you to be happy."

"So this is real?" she asked, daring to touch his hair, his skin, trace the inside of his ear.

"It's the only reality I know. I have a body again, and I'm not alone, and I think you had everything to do with that."

"Oh," she said, letting out a little laugh.

"Laugh again," he asked. "I never heard you laugh in the in-between place."

"I can't, just, you know, do it on command," she said, feeling awfully self-conscious.

He nibbled on her neck and tickled her sides, and she laughed, like little bells pealing. "I didn't know I'd still be ticklish," she said, shoving his hands away playfully.

"Shall I stop touching you?" he asked.

"Just don't tickle me," she said, and he kissed her again. And again. And the flat rock, sensing its need had changed, transformed to a field of soft grasses and wildflowers and sunlight shining on them, and their two spirits became pure light as well, melding together, fitting inside the other until they were two halves of a whole, just like those old myths Bella had once heard. _**I'm**__ his missing half_, she thought with surprise. _It's me_.

And her body, or whatever she possessed on this other side, in this other reality, felt joy she could not contain, and she laughed and cried and sang as if she were creating a universe as he loved her and loved her again, touching her with fingers as light as an angel, gripping her like a man drowning in the ocean. "I'm here, I'm here," she found herself saying, and he just melted into her until neither felt they were in their bodies any longer. They were fused together, a column of light even brighter than the sun that shone down upon them. They floated in the air, their molecules combining, no longer half Bella and half Edward, but wholly something new and different and wonderful and perfect.

Who knows how long they stayed in this united state? Hours or eons later, or maybe just a one blink of an eye in the dim reflection of earth time, they were lying on the flat rock again, holding hands and staring at the heavens. There were heavens here too, and the more time they had spent in this other phase tangled into one perfect being, the more detailed the land had become, filling in as their love for each other in _this_ world, on _this_ plane grew.

_Wow_, thought Bella.

"Yeah," said Edward, giving her hand another squeeze.

_Can you hear my thoughts? _she asked in her head.

_Can you hear mine?_ he said in reply. She turned to him and nodded, and he kissed her again. Maybe parts of her were still in him, and parts of him still in her, because now she could understand his thoughts as if they were her own. _Just like the man of salt and the woman of sugar_, she thought, smiling, remembering her other, sad life, now so far away.

_We should probably join them_, he said, just to her. She nodded.

Hand in hand they walked to a large doorway that appeared as soon as they had decided to leave this place, this antechamber. They held hands, but now they would have been connected even without touching. Physical space was merely illusion.

The door swung open, and the Woman in Blue waited, smiling, glittering in her dress of the evening sky.

"So you understand, finally, Warrior Maiden, Lost Brother?"

"I do," said Bella, smiling. She turned to Edward, expecting him to answer in a similar fashion, but he looked almost afraid. She knew that look—it was the look of hoping too much and worrying your heart would break harder for having hoped at all.

"What did you call me? _Lost Brother_?" asked Edward. He stared at the Woman in Blue, perched on the edge of the unknown. "Who are you?" he whispered.

"I think you already know," she said, reaching to embrace him. She held him for a long time, tears silently streaming down her face, but she never stopped smiling.

"Emmy?" he said in a choked voice.

"_Our borrowed angel_," murmured Bella as if reciting a prayer.

The Woman in Blue released Edward from her embrace just long enough to draw Bella into her arms as well. "Welcome, New Sister," she said, "and Lost Brother. Come; we have been waiting."

She hugged them tightly once more before standing tall, straightening her gown, composing herself. She led them with regal steps under the archway, and they followed her, walking hand in hand into their forever, Bride and Bridegroom, united at last.

**

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A/N: You'll note I don't say anything definitive about the wolves. Were they real or not? That's up to you too. Do they exist in the human afterlife? Hmm. So many questions. **

**Yes, I live to torture.**

**This might be the last outtake, unless there is more whoring of myself for charity. Or if you guys ask enough about a POV you'd like, or answers about something. Whatevs. **

**Thanks for reading.  
**


	9. Osternest

**A/N: This is a piece won in the last Support Stacie auction by Original Audience, who is lovely, lovely, lovely, and, as far as I know, looks nothing like Cousin Itt. **

**Disclaimer: Still not mine.**

**

* * *

Osternest**

The children woke her early, before the sun had begun its journey into the sky, sneaking into the room she'd slept in when she was about the same age as her littlest. They were such happy, boisterous children, not at all like the quiet, haunted girl she had been. Even when they interrupted her slumber, she was so grateful that they were exuberant, rambunctious. You couldn't be hyper and shrieking in delight unless all your needs were being met, and she felt proud and relieved she could give her kids that sense of security.

"Mama! Mama! When can we go get our baskets?" They jumped up and down on her bed, jostling her tiny body around. Even after two pregnancies, she still had the body of a teenage boy—the only difference now were the wrinkles on her stomach, the way she could pull her skin away from herself. When she woke up in the mornings, she often forgot, for a moment, that she was a mother now. She felt like a child more often than not, helpless, silenced. And as the last scraps of sleep fell away from her, she always remembered the night when everything changed, the night she lost _her_, yet gained so much more.

She stretched daintily and sat up. "What time is it?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

Tony bounced up and down on his knees. "It's time for Easter baskets!"

"You know better than that, Tony. Look at my watch. Where is the big hand? Where is the little hand?"

Tony screwed his face up in concentration. "Your watch looks like a line. The little hand is pointing straight down at the six, and the big hand is reaching for the top, at the twelve."

"So that means …?"

"Suh …. Six o'clock," Tony answered with hesitation.

"Good boy," she said. "And my goodness, that's even earlier than last year. Last year you gave me at least until half-past."

"I'm growing up, you know," he said, puffing his tiny little chest out.

"Of course you are, darling," she said, pulling him into a hug.

"Me too, me too!" said the chubby brunette who'd been sucking on her fingers.

"Come here, my sweetie Marie." Marie scrambled onto the lumpy part of the blanket where she was pretty sure her mother's legs were hiding.

"Let's let Grandpa Charlie sleep in just a little longer. We can have hot cocoa and pancakes in our jammies, and then we'll get dressed and drive over. How does that sound?"

"Pan-cakes! Pan-cakes!" Tony and Marie marched out of her room, pumping their arms in the air in time with their enthusiastic chanting. She hoped only that they hadn't woken her parents.

The pounding overhead and Doppler-effect squealing woke her father, who opened his eyes and smiled. His wife still slept, and he said a silent prayer of thanks that sleep was once again easy for her, a time for peace. Her face was unlined, untroubled in her slumber. God, she was still so beautiful. He considered getting up to say good morning to his grandkids, but he knew they'd be leaving soon enough. He understood that Easter mornings belonged to Grandpa Charlie. Over the last fifteen or so years he'd watched the bond between his daughter and the town's police chief—now newly retired—grow. Neither he nor his wife knew what had happened when their previously mute daughter had cried out in the dead of night in the worst February of their lives. Carlisle thought it wasn't right to pry; Alice would tell them the story if or when she felt ready to share. He could tell it was precious to her, the same way her memory of life before the Cullens was a private, sacred matter. Admittedly, sometimes he felt left out, but he respected secrets, and he knew Alice and the kids would be back for the family's Easter supper, as they always were. It was just a few hours on Easter morning—and he couldn't deny the chief the comfort his daughter seemed to bring. _He's lost his heart too_, Carlisle would think, and he'd fill with so much sorrow—his own and the chief's—that there was no room left for jealousy. Hell, at least he still had Emmett and Tanya and Alice, and all his sweet grandchildren.

The chief, however, had lost it all.

_Let him have Easter morning with Alice and the kids_.

He rolled back over on his side, put an arm around his wife, and tried to fall back asleep.

***

"Are you buckled in, Tony?" Alice glanced in the rearview mirror. He weighed enough now for a booster seat, and he always dutifully pulled the belt out all the way until it snapped back, locking in place. Even so, she asked. She asked every time. He didn't want her buckling him in anymore, thought he was too old to be babied like that. But she asked because she would always be his mother, and she would always worry about his safety. It had been easier when she'd been pregnant, when she had known where the kids were at all times. She could feel them moving inside her and know they were safe. Now, there wasn't that direct, constant contact, so what could she do? She would ask him if his belt were buckled, even if he rolled his eyes and thought, for a second, that he hated her.

It was worth it.

The chief's house was an explosion of plastic and artificially bright colors. He always strung plastic eggs from the branches of the large tree on the front lawn. Those were empty, the kids knew, but scattered around were the good eggs, every one filled with some kind of chocolate surprise. No dud jellybean-filled eggs for these two. Grandpa Charlie wouldn't allow it.

Marie started kicking her plump legs in excitement. "Faster, Mama!" she cried out, tugging at her harness as Alice parked the car. Tony waited until he heard his mom turn the ignition off before he undid his belt and straightened his Easter suit.

"I'll unbuckle you, Marie," he said, and she stared at him gratefully and stopped struggling in her seat. Alice choked back a tear when she caught the exchange in the rearview mirror. She knew that look. She'd so often looked at her Eddie that way—he was always her hero, even when he didn't know it. Because they'd shared no genetic material, she was amazed at how much Tony was like her lost brother. He'd lose his temper with Alice sometimes—after all, he was just a kid—but he had endless stores of patience for his baby sister. He would never let anything bad happen to her, not on his watch.

_I miss you, Eddie_, she thought, and it struck her that this used to be the only way she could communicate with him, the thoughts swirling in her mind but her lips refusing to let them out. He'd still known, though. He always had seemed to know what she was thinking. She couldn't believe she'd now lived more of her life without him than with him.

Before she'd even slammed her door shut, Charlie came running out of the house, which was a bit chancy with his newly replaced hip. "Alice! And how are my sweethearts?" He held his arms wide as the kids ran to him, nearly knocking him over with the force of their tiny bodies.

"Grandpa Charlie! Grandpa Charlie!"

"Be careful, kids," Alice warned. "Your Grandpa Charlie is still recovering from his surgery."

"Nonsense, Alice," said Charlie. "I'm good as new. If I wasn't going to die on the table, I was going to be fine." He did a little hip jiggle to demonstrate the tiptop shape of his body.

She walked to him and got on her toes to kiss his dry cheek. She tried not to notice all the new gray hairs in his hair and mustache. She forced herself to ignore how she didn't have to stretch as tall as she had last Easter in order to reach his cheek. "Hey, Charlie. It's good to see you."

She wrapped her slim arms around his neck, and he squeezed her back so tightly that she had to struggle for breath. Ordinarily she would have jokingly complained, but she was too relieved that he was still strong, still wiry. _He's just fine_, she thought, and she felt like she could exhale for the first time since she'd gotten back to Forks for the holiday.

"All right, you two, who wants baskets?" Charlie asked, his mustache twitching in amusement.

"Me! Me!" Tony and Marie jumped up and down, the hem of Marie's Easter dress flying up in a most unladylike fashion.

He'd set the baskets down in order to hug everyone, and now he held them just out of the reach of their chubby hands. Marie tired of the game before Tony, but the moment her lower lip stuck out and began to tremble, Charlie stopped teasing. "Here you go, kiddo," he said, patting her head. "Now go get yourself some eggs!" She ran off shrieking, and Alice hoped his neighbors were either extremely early risers or hard of hearing.

Tony was more dignified with his basket, not wanting to rumple his good suit, and he knew there were plenty of tall hiding places where Marie couldn't reach. He didn't need to hurry. He marched along with purpose, concentrating deeply.

As the two scrambled around the front lawn, looking in the grass, under upside-down flowerpots, inside the enormous coil of the garden hose, Alice linked her arm with Charlie's, leaning on his arm. "How's everything?"

"Meh," he said, shrugging. "Life gets to be pretty monotonous when you retire. I mean, it's great that I can go fishing whenever I want now, but even that gets boring. I guess it was more exciting when I had work staring me in the face the next day, because I knew there was a worse place I could be."

"Please don't tell me you watch 'Cops' reruns all day," Alice said, her eyes never leaving her children as they tore apart the chief's lawn for booty.

"Don't be ridiculous. There's also 'Reno 911.'"

"It's too bad 'Cop Rock' isn't on anymore."

"Alice, you can't even have been born when 'Cop Rock' was out. You're not allowed to be nostalgic."

"I'm an old soul," she sniffed. "And I like kitschy things. 'Cop Rock' is a little piece of kitsch heaven."

Charlie threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, Alice, why do you always have to go away?"

Alice didn't tell him the truth: that it was too hard to be in Forks all the time. Every tree, every storefront, every mailbox reminded her too much of the past. Everything in the town made her miss Eddie. She had known the town best when he'd been alive, with her. It had been hard enough when he'd left for college. At the time she didn't think she could miss him more, but he'd at least still existed on this plane. She could at least imagine if every soul on earth had a window, she could look through hers and eventually find his. There was still a part of him on the planet where she could feel his presence. Her soul could reach out beyond the borders of her house, her town, her state, and connect with his.

After the plane crash, he was gone. It didn't matter that they hadn't found the body right away; Alice knew. She could feel it in her heart that his window wasn't hanging there any longer. Or if it were there, it had been shuttered closed.

And then there was that night, the night everything changed. _Bella_. She gave up _everything_ for Alice, and she hadn't even known it, not until it was too late for her to make the choice for herself.

When Alice dreamed, she still saw it, bits of the dream she'd had the night everything changed. She'd still catch glimpses of Bella's small, short life, the girl who had watched her, had loved her without knowing her, and had loved her Eddie enough to walk right off the earth and into the beyond because she'd thought it might save him. Some nights Alice would dream she _was_ Bella, reliving her life. She'd see random memories of having breakfast with a younger, more vibrant Charlie. She'd look down and see Bella's pale arms instead of her own. It reminded her of that movie _Being John Malkovich_; when she slept, she became Bella for these brief periods of time.

None of the memories were new; they'd all rushed past her the night they found Eddie's body. They'd flashed by so quickly that she couldn't make out each individual scene, but she'd gotten the impression of a life lived simply, selflessly, sorrowfully, yet with so much love that every part of her ached even experiencing it secondhand. When she dreamed, even if she hadn't seen the each frame of the memory when it had flitted past, it still seemed somehow familiar. She wondered how Bella had done it, had flooded her mind with an imprint of her entire life in such a short time.

Tony and Marie had gathered all the eggs in record time. "If only we could train them to sniff out drugs or explosives—they'd be real useful at the border," Charlie joked. The kids were already running into the house, knowing their special Easter presents were inside. Charlie turned to Alice after watching the two climb up the stairs to the open front door. "Are you ready for your chocolate bunny?"

***

The first Easter after … Alice hadn't been sure if she should go see Charlie. Had he meant it, when he'd invited her over? She asked her parents if they thought it would be okay. "Really? He asked you to come over for Easter?" said Esme.

"He said it would be hard not to have anyone around, and would I like to come over," Alice said.

Esme was still getting used to Alice's voice. Since Alice had been silent for so long, Esme almost felt it would have been more natural for Alice to begin with babbling, blowing raspberries, like her two boys had slowly learned to talk. For her to go from silence to complete, complex sentences, even if she'd always communicated well with her notepad, well, it was a hard adjustment. She knew it was connected, somehow, to the death of the Swan girl—_so strange for two students from the same class dying so young, in the same month, in freak accidents_—but she didn't really _understand_. She'd phoned up the chief to ask. "Hello, is this Chief Swan?" she asked, twirling a lock of hair around her finger. "I hope I'm not interrupting. You know my daughter Alice?"

There was silence on the other end. Esme was about to excuse herself and hang up, but she heard someone sigh heavily. "Yes," he said.

She waited for him to say something else, but that was it, just that one word. "Well, Alice says that you asked her over for Easter, and she wanted me to check with you if you did really want her to come over."

"I don't want to make her do something she doesn't want to."

Esme turned to her daughter, who was looking at her expectantly. She covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said, "Chief Swan wants to know if you really want to come over." Alice smiled widely and nodded. "Chief Swan? Yes, she really would like to, if it's no bother."

"Why would it be a bother?" asked the chief gruffly. He grumbled under his breath for a while. "Yes, tell her she can come by anytime she wants."

On Easter morning, Alice didn't know what to expect, but she felt herself being pulled toward Charlie. She owed it to Bella, for everything. "Mom?" she asked, scratching on her parents' bedroom door. "I'm ready if you are."

Esme came out a minute later, her hair half done, her dress buttoned crookedly. "All right," she said. Her eyes were tired and dull. Easter had been such fun when the boys were little. She couldn't even smell white vinegar these days without crying, the aroma immediately bringing her back to dyeing eggs with the boys. Alice hadn't understood the point of coloring eggs, so they'd skipped the rituals with her. And now she wanted to go to this stranger's house?

When they got to the chief's house, Esme wasn't sure if she should go inside or wait in the car. _He's a stranger. Sure, he's the chief of police, but I don't __**know**__him, and what kind of mother leaves her daughter with a strange adult man?_ As awkward as she felt, she knew her duty as a mother. She walked with Alice to the door. Alice rang the doorbell, and it was so quiet that Esme thought maybe the chief had forgotten, or maybe hadn't meant it in the first place. But then the door opened, and there stood the chief, still unshaven but wearing a ridiculous pair of rabbit ears on his head.

"Alice!" His eyes lit up. "I'm so glad you're here." He nodded at Esme and invited them both inside.

Alice sat on the couch politely, her hands folded in her lap, as Charlie bustled around in the kitchen. She could hear cellophane crinkling, and he came back with the largest basket she'd ever seen. "Happy Easter, kid," he said, putting the basket on her lap. It felt like it was weighed down with a bowling ball.

"That's a really big bunny," Alice said, looking at the solid chocolate rabbit that stared back at her through the cellophane.

"It, uh, I'd bought it for …" Charlie trailed off.

"I know," Alice said. She turned to Esme. "Mom? Do you mind waiting outside? I need to talk to Charlie … about … Bella."

Esme nodded and stood up. "I'll just wait in the car." She nodded at the chief. "Chief Swan, it's good to see you. Thanks for being so kind to my daughter."

"Thank you for letting her visit me," he said, giving her a timid, one-armed hug. "It's … I mean, I guess you know how hard it is, missing …" He swallowed hard, unable to continue.

Esme squeezed his hand, her eyes full of tears. "I know," she whispered. "I wish I didn't, but I know."

Esme let herself out and sat in the car. She was glad, actually, that Alice had asked her to leave, because at least now she didn't have to try not to cry. She let herself sob until she was hoarse, pounding her fists on the dashboard, wailing. _Why her beautiful boy? Her talented, perfect boy?_ The wave of grief passed quickly, like a snow squall, and soon she felt foolish and dug in her purse for a tissue. She dabbed at her face, glad she hadn't bothered to put on makeup this morning. The tissue smelled like mint, buried in her purse so long next to a pack of gum. She leaned her head against the cool glass and tried to remember the sound of Edward's laugh.

***

"I still see her in dreams," said Alice, afraid to look Charlie in the eye. "Sometimes she lets me be her for a while."

Charlie had never been one to believe in kooky New Age woo-woo, but this strange girl _knew_ things about him, about Bella, that he knew neither had ever told anyone else. She knew about the donuts, about Longfellow graduation, the debilitating fear of flying. When she'd first come to him, she told him that Bella loved him forever, as deep as the ocean, as wide as the sky, harder than she could squeeze him. She told him the darndest thing, that Bella had died to save her. Bella had died in a fire on the other side of the country—what did that have to do with this odd little girl?

"My mother—my birth mother—was murdered in front of me," the girl had said. "I couldn't talk after. I never spoke again—until the night Bella died. She came to me. I didn't even know. I didn't know who she was, but she said she did it for me. I didn't understand, but then I heard the news about your daughter, and when I saw her picture in the paper, I knew it was the same, and she told me, she told me to come to you, that you would love me too."

Charlie had wanted to scream at her, to ask her what the hell gave her the right to mess with people who'd lost their whole reason to live, but when he looked into her eyes, he could almost imagine it was Bella staring back at him, and when she hugged him, it was like she absorbed some of his hurt and carried it inside her.

He chose to believe her, and hug her back, and weep into her hair. "I miss her so much," he'd said, and she didn't stop squeezing him.

"I know," she'd said again and again.

***

"Did you … remember anything else?" he asked once Esme had gone to the car as Alice had asked.

Alice was immediately more relaxed once it was just the two of them. "I used to see her dreams, I think," she said. "It was a beautiful and scary place, and she was so brave. You should have seen her," she said, her face shining. "She wasn't afraid of anything, not even of dying, in the end."

He hid his face in his hands. "Should I stop?" Alice asked.

"No, please, it does me good to hear about her."

"But other than that, she just wanted you to know how much she loved you. I see things, like when you'd drive her to school. She was embarrassed about the cop car, but she was still so sorry that she made you feel bad about it. She was disappointed in herself that she was ashamed of you, even for a moment. But she was proud, so proud, that you were her daddy."

"Why don't you open your basket?" Charlie said after he'd collected himself.

Alice wasn't too interested in the basket, but she unwrapped it because she felt that's what Bella would have wanted her to do. There was something rough and egg-shaped at the bottom of the basket—some kind of rock, maybe?

"It's a geode," Charlie said. "I was in Port Angeles on police business, and I walked by this thing three times in some mystical bullshit—pardon my French—shop I'd never even gone in before. I kept trying to leave that mystical bull—" He managed to stop himself in time. "Erm, so I kept trying to leave, and I wasn't even sure why I was there in the first place, but something told me that I wouldn't be able to go until I got it for you." He shrugged and scratched his head. "It's probably stupid."

"Oh," said Alice, looking at the purple crystals inside. "It's just like Bella. It's just like me."

"What do you mean?"

"We're all plain on the outside, and people think we're ordinary, but inside we are a whole universe, and no one would ever know."

"I knew," Charlie said. "I always knew she was special. She didn't see it. She never saw it, did she?"

"She saw it in the way you looked at her," Alice said. "Thank you for the rock. Eddie once got me a rock. Maybe he was the one who wouldn't let you leave."

***

"Mama, Grandpa Charlie got us more pretty rocks!" Marie shouted, tugging on her arm and out of her memory. The kids had a whole bookshelf in the living room just to display the various Charlie Easter rocks. Alice hoped they'd never grow tired of them, hoped that they'd always see something special about each rock he gave. There was a flat piece of agate that looked like a sunrise, a strange piece of pumice, huge but light enough for Marie to carry.

"I can't believe I shell out my social security for rocks," Charlie said, shaking his head. "I must be the biggest chump in the world."

Alice examined the most recent addition, a large, smooth piece of rose quartz. "You don't know how long these rocks have been around, how long they take to form. These rocks could be older than all of us, even an old coot like you."

"Watch it," Charlie said, holding up one finger. "I still can put you under arrest for impertinence, or sass."

Alice ignored him, holding the smooth stone up to her eye. "Who knows, maybe Bella or Edward once touched something that's in this stone. Or maybe a part of them is inside."

"Hmm," said Charlie, considering. He took the quartz from Alice for a moment and turned it this way and that in the light. "Hi, kiddo, if you're in there," he said. "Your daddy still misses you."

"Hi, Bella. Hi, Eddie," Alice said, waving a little at the rock cupped in Charlie's hand.


	10. Ein Jahr später

**A/N: Happy birthday, Twirl.**

**

* * *

Ein Jahr später**

She can't believe it's already been a year. A whole year since she lost her best friend. "Lost," like she just forgot where she left her. She lives in her happy past in the haze of half-dreaming, but then the heaviness of real life settles on her chest. Every day she looks at the sketchbook. "Where are you, Bella?" she asks.

She stares at the picture of Bella and … someone. "Did you find him?" she asks. "Is he taking care of you?"

She touches the soft black velvet on the page with a fingertip, a holy relic. "I miss you," she says, and then she begins her day. Just another day in her life without Bella.

It's her final year of law school, and she had a great 2L summer internship, so she knows she's set for after graduation. Law, seemingly concrete and inanimate, flows and fluxes, and she loves wandering through tiny text on transparent pages into labyrinthine rulings and amendments, feeling dizzy and confused when she finally closes her books. She feels, sometimes, like she can see the world built in Legos, everything broken down to basic forms, intricately joined. Law makes _sense_. It makes sense in a way that the sketchbook and the tiny red plastic monkey do not. But they each provide a different kind of comfort.

Sometimes she clings to problems she knows she can solve. Brick by brick, she can build or demolish walls. Yet sometimes … sometimes it's more of a comfort knowing that she _doesn't_ know. Knowing that there is something _unknowable_. Because if there is something that her human, mortal mind cannot comprehend, maybe that means there is more to this world than this life, this short, fragile existence. Maybe it means that Bella really is all right, that magic can be real, that other dimensions may exist where time flows in all directions, where life continues even when it seems to be snuffed out in this limited world.

She's not sure how she will spend this day. Maybe she'll go to Longfellow's campus church, where Bella's East Coast memorial was held, so many candles lit as if she'd kindled every soul she'd come in contact with during her short life. There's a bench in the church dedicated to her. A tiny brass plaque hammered into the worn yet majestic wood—Rose had talked to the university chaplain to make the arrangements, to start the fundraising. It hadn't taken long—whether or not she'd known it while she lived, Bella had been—is still—loved.

As Rosalie tromps to breakfast in the law school cafeteria, her skin tingles, as if her neurons are trying to pick up a signal from the great beyond. "Is that you?" she whispers, her exhalation leaving a small cloud in the February air. But the tiny misty puff is soon gone again, her brief warm breath no match against the vastness of the cold Boston air. _Just like our lives_, Rosalie thinks. _A flash of heat and brilliance, but even the brightest flame cannot win against the endless pressure of time moving forward and forward and forward. _

_Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow._

Rosalie slaps her face a few times, the physical sting distracting her from the ache in her chest. She doesn't want to cry today. Bella wouldn't like it. She'd feel guilty. The best gift she could give her friend today is to honor her, to celebrate, to laugh, to _live_.

_Don't squander your life_, she tells herself sternly. _Live for her_.

She decides to skip all her classes, to spend the day in the Museum of Fine Arts. From the sculpture garden in the back she can almost see Bella's apartment. They've rebuilt, and Rosalie wonders for a moment who lives in Bella's old place. Maybe they didn't even keep the same layout. She considers walking over the bridge and through the park, buzzing the old apartment number, but she quickly realizes how foolish that would be.

She wanders into the museum, presenting her student ID for free admission. She goes from room to room trying to figure out which pieces Bella would have spent time observing, her head tilted to the side, her brow furrowed in concentration. When was the last time they'd gone to look at art together? Maybe it was while they were both still undergrads. _So stupid, me and my Trader Joe's rituals, when I should have been pushing her to get out, see art with me, teach me things, let me know about her_.

Museums have a soporific effect on Rosalie, and she finds herself fighting to keep her eyes open. It's the silence, the muted light, the cloying warmth. She has an image of herself falling asleep on her feet, falling over, and ripping a priceless painting from the wall. _Home_, she tells herself, and she leaves the museum without finding even one painting she's certain Bella would have known.

Standing on the crowded E train back into town, Rosalie's skin still prickles. Maybe from the extreme heat to bitter cold back to the stuffy warmth of the subway car filled with stale breath. Or maybe … again, maybe it's a message. Maybe Bella is trying to tell her something.

She remembers something as she unlocks the downstairs door—as a child at her cousin's wedding, how her aunt had told her to put a slice of wedding cake under her pillow so she'd dream of the man she would marry. Rose had eaten the carefully wrapped slice, the paper napkin translucent in spots where the butter in the icing had seeped through, like a monochromatic stained glass window. _Waste of cake_, she'd thought at the time. _If I put this cake under my pillow, it'll just get smushy and dry. I don't need to dream about my husband_. And she'd eaten the cake in about three bites.

Her skin is humming as she continues to climb up the stairs. _Put the monkey under the pillow_, the humming seems to say. Bonkers. She's gone absolutely bonkers. _What would Bella do_? she asks herself, but she already knows.

She wraps the red plastic monkey in a small sock, tucking him in as if the sock is only a terrycloth sleeping bag. "I hope my giant cranium doesn't crush you," she says in apology even before she gets under the covers to take a long-overdue nap.

_Museums_, she thinks as she lets her eyes close. _Would be better with strobe lights and some techno, maybe_.

* * *

She wakes up in a strange place, strange yet so familiar. _I've seen this before_, she thinks, and tries to remember. The tall trees, the rubble, the rushing water of the wide stream. "Hello?" she asks, feeling someone's eyes on her.

She shivers, but tells herself she is not afraid.

She takes another long look at the odd assortment of trees, the thick forest just beyond the rubble. _Bella would like this place_, she thinks, and that's when she remembers the sketchbook, the impossible sketchbook. _She was here_, Rose thinks, as much as the logical side of her brain wants to say that it's impossible for one person to enter the dreamscape of someone else, especially someone who has died. All the same, she thinks, _Hi, Bella_, thinks but does not speak, not wanting to share with whoever is watching her.

Her feet lead her over the rubble, the dead branches, and into the dark woods. Something crunches underfoot, almost like a dead leaf. She takes a breath and leans down to pick it up, keeping her foot pressed on top lest the object flutter away like a moth. Strange things happen in dreams.

Her fingers dig into the rich, damp earth under her foot and clamp around a triangular wad of paper. With trembling hands she unfolds the thing carefully. _Huh_, she thinks,_ I used to play table football with these_. She tries to remember how to hold her hands into goalposts as she unfolds.

_RAINBOW OBSIDIAN_, she reads.

Oh, one of her favorite shiny rocks, she thinks, and she tries to remember when she and Bella talked about obsidian. She gives up, folding the paper back into its triangular form. She is startled to see a slim girl staring at her, pointing at the paper. Where did she come from? She's so silent and still that Rosalie's not sure if the girl is only a statue.

"That's mine," the girl says, breaking the silence and the illusion of inanimateness. "I lost it a long time ago."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know it was yours." Rose offers the paper to her. Because the girl won't stop staring, she adds, "I didn't take it. I just found it."

The girl is still studying her face as she tucks the paper into her pocket. "I know you," she says.

"Do you?"

"I know your face."

"I don't know yours."

The girl shrugs. "That's okay." She keeps her hand in her pocket, probably still clutching the little paper triangle. "You were her friend."

"Are you an angel?" asks Rosalie, shivering again.

"That's silly." The girl scrunches her face and shakes her head. "You were her friend," she repeats. She steps away from Rosalie, closing her eyes and nodding. "She misses you," she says.

Rose's heart nearly stops. She wants to ask more, find out what this girl knows, _how_ she knows. But what if she's just speaking nonsense? Rose would rather think in this moment that magic is real, that the world isn't all bricks and Legos and reason. "I miss her too, so much," she says instead.

"She knows. She loves you." The girl kicks her bare feet through the leaves. She looks behind her. "I should go," she says. "It was nice to see you here." She grabs Rosalie's hand in her two small cold ones. Rose can feel something pressed into her palm. "Bye now," the girl says, and Rosalie finds herself leaning down for the girl to kiss her cheek.

"Don't open it until you get home," the girl says, turning around and disappearing into the wood.

As she walks back to the clearing, the rubble, Rosalie suddenly feels like Orpheus. Her fingers itch to unfold the thing in her hand, but she knows somehow that if she did, it would disappear like smoke, like trying to turn and see Eurydice before they've left the underworld.

_Wake up already_, she thinks crossly, crushing the token in her hand.

* * *

It takes a moment or two before Rosalie remembers who she is, what day it is, that Bella is gone. Same as always. She balls up her fist to punch the mattress but feels something poke the palm of her hand.

A wad of paper, yellowed with age, smudged with dirt, crumpled, creased, uncreased, and folded carefully again.

_RAINBOW OBSIDIAN_, it says.

She tries to remember why it sounds so familiar, these two words on this tattered piece of paper.

When she pulls the sock out from under her pillow, the little red monkey seems to smile at her, and she hangs him back up on the edge of her jar full of pens, where he sways from side to side slowly like a metronome.

_He's not alive_, Rose tells herself, but that doesn't stop his happy swinging.


End file.
